1. Chapter Nine: Products & Brands Lauren Gaites Lauren Sabol Vicky Paccione

2. Core Competencies Undergird Online Competitive Advantage Core Competency: A company's core competency is the one thing that it can do better than its competitors. Web Marketing Today Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant Assess your interests, abilities and strengths Monitor your likes and dislikes Identify your Competitive advantage Decide how to sustain your competitive advantage Examples: Google, Overstock.com, Amazon.com

3. Reports Readers Survey Suggests Shopping Online for Electronics May be Best You would expect that mass retailers would be the best place to buy digital electronics, but consumer reports found that shopping online may be a smarter idea Ie. Best Buy, Circuit City Bricks-and-morters-specialty retailers often are shopping destinations. Shoppers will travel considerable distances to purchase a certain product. Ie. www.tiffany.com Mass merchandisers such as Target, Costco, Wal-Mart have great prices but have low ratings in the service category Bricks-and-clicks- businesses who sell their products both in-store and online

4. Mass Customization: MadeForOne.com MadeForOne.com Mass customization- “enabling a customer to decide the exact specification of a product or service, and have that product or service supplied to them at a price close to that for an ordinary mass produced alternative". MadeForOne.com- website designed to be a centre of news on mass customized and personalized products, and analysis of mass customization and personalization. Most recently MadeForOne.com has added: Personalization Directory: a directory of enterprises who supply personalized gifts and mass customized products of any type.